Before the kingdoms.
Before the stars were charted.
Before the gods themselves were named—
There were those who held power not granted by the world, but woven into its foundation.
They did not draw magic from the world.
They carried it within them.
They were known as the Veilborn—
And they nearly ended everything.
Their presence alone fractured reality. Their footsteps sang in the ley lines. The world tolerated them… until it couldn't.
And so, the world itself devised the Veils—layers of suppression to subdue such power, not to imprison it, but to protect everything else.
These veils are not chains.
They are warnings.
They are promises that should never be broken.
A Fragile Balance
The world of Vaeritha is a web of balances:
Magic and will
Creation and destruction
Sky and stone
Memory and forgetting
To disturb these balances is to wake Vaeritha's oldest memory—the memory of pain.
And yet, on one night… the balance shifted again.
The Night of the Crimson Eclipse
It began with the stars—snuffed out, one by one, until only two remained.
Then the moon turned red as blood.
The clouds circled like spirals drawn by trembling hands.
The wind fell silent.
Inside the mountain fortress of Vaelcrest, Lady Selira Vaelcrest clutched her swollen belly and screamed.
The Grand Seer, Valtos, stood at her side in silence, eyes white with sight. His fingers trembled as he opened a silver-scroll prophecy sealed for generations.
His lips moved soundlessly as he read the ancient lines:
"One of stone, one of flame.
One to hold, one to awaken.
When born beneath blood sky,
the world will breathe—and remember."
The First Twin – Kaizen Vaelcrest
The earth beneath the birthing chamber groaned as the child came forth.
There was no scream—only a sound like grinding rock, a crack of pressure against marble as stone split under the child's arrival.
The boy's eyes opened instantly.
Golden. Deep. Still.
When the midwife moved to swaddle him, her fingers froze—his tiny hand had grasped her wrist with a grip that felt unnatural.
He didn't cry. He didn't wail. He simply watched the room, as if measuring it.
The Seer gasped.
"The Pillar has returned," he whispered. "He holds the world in his hands."
They named him Kaizen—a name from the Old Tongue, meaning Unbroken Stone.
The Second Twin – Yvonne Vaelcrest
The second child arrived less than a minute later.
She came in silence—no pressure, no tremor. But when she emerged, every candle in the room flared blue.
The shadows twisted, and the warded runes on the stone walls bled silver light.
Her eyes were closed. But the moment she was placed in her mother's arms, she opened them.
And the Seer fell to his knees.
Her gaze was impossible—silver-violet, swirling with constellations that didn't belong to any known sky.
She did not blink.
She did not cry.
She simply stared… through them all.
"She is looking back," the Seer breathed. "Through time. Through lives. Through the Veils themselves."
They named her Yvonne—a name meaning Living Flame.
The Prophecy Rekindled
As the midwife covered the newborns in silken cloth, a scroll in the Seer's robes unsealed itself, ink blazing with golden light:
"Twins under Crimson sky—
One of weight, one of light.
The first shall hold the world in place,
The second shall break it open.
And the Sixth Veil shall tremble."
The Seer's hands trembled. "We must hide them."
The Oath of Silence
That night, Lord and Lady Vaelcrest took a vow.
They would raise their children not as gods, not as Veilborn, but as ordinary heirs to a noble house.
Six veils were cast upon the twins—not to seal, but to delay.
Each veil would hold back a portion of their true nature—power, memory, knowledge, truth.
Each layer was a choice waiting to be made.
Because should those veils fall too quickly… the world would awaken.
And it would not forgive what it remembered.